


the meaning of home

by venndaai



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: “You’re all fecking idiots,” Laris said. “Fine. I suppose I’d better pack, then.”
Relationships: Dahj Asha & Jean-Luc Picard, Elnor & Jean-Luc Picard, Elnor & Laris (Star Trek), Elnor & Seven of Nine, Hugh | Third of Five & Seven of Nine, Laris/Zhaban & Jean-Luc Picard, Raffi Musiker/Seven of Nine
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	the meaning of home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kira_katrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/gifts).



“Whatever else she is, she’s a child,” the Romulan woman said. Dahj wanted to protest. Maybe a week ago, she would have. Even three days ago, she’d felt very adult, drinking with Caler in her own apartment, celebrating the future spreading out in front of her. Now- now, yes, she felt like a child. A child who wanted her family with her. Mom- Dad-

But Mom and Dad weren’t real. They were more than gone. They’d never been here.

Soji. Soji, what’s going on?

“We can protect her here,” the woman- Laris- was saying. “This is the only place she’ll be safe.” 

Dahj heard herself laugh. “A vineyard is the safest place to hide from Romulan assassins?”

Laris turned to look down at Dahj, where she was sitting on the couch, and one corner of her mouth twitched. 

“You don’t know the security measures she’s installed here,” the Romulan man remarked, coming out of the kitchen with a tray in his hands. He put it down in front of Dahj. There was a bowl of soup, and a thick slice of crusty bread, warm and steaming, and neither of them any replicator pattern she’d seen before; maybe that big fancy kitchen actually got used. That was the kind of thing old people did. “This isn’t your average vineyard.”

Dahj didn’t know what to think of that. She picked up the spoon; it felt heavy and cool in her hand. She took a sip of the soup, swallowed it. She didn’t know much about French cuisine. She didn’t want to think about it too hard, in case she suddenly- knew more than she’d thought she did. She thought maybe the soup was parsnip. It was warm, and comforting in her mouth. 

Someone was watching her. She looked up, and across the coffee table to the other couch where Dr. Jurati still sat huddled, staring at her like- like Dad had looked when his ghost orchid had finally flowered. Like Dahj was something miraculous and beautiful. Under other circumstances Dahj maybe wouldn’t have minded being looked at like that by one of the people she most professionally admired in the galaxy, but right now it was- oh God it was just all too much. 

Soji should be here right now, not her. Soji was the smart one, even if Dahj’s grades had always been better. Soji understood people. All Dahj knew was math, and it wasn’t helping her right now. 

Someone put a hand on her shoulder. She felt the tension ease a little bit, even before she turned to see Admiral Picard’s kind, gently smiling face. He smelled like home, somehow; nothing she could identify or describe, just a soothing nostalgia whenever she was near enough to smell his sweater and whatever old man cologne he wore. 

It ought to upset her, just as much as all the other things that didn’t make any sense. But it didn’t.

Dahj put down her spoon. “My sister’s in danger,” she said. “I’m not going to leave her out there alone.”

“I promise you, she won’t be alone,” Admiral Picard said. “I’m going to visit her, make sure she’s safe. But you should stay here. Laris is right.”

Laris snorted. “Don’t hear that very often around here,” she said. “Say it again.” 

“I’m not abandoning her,” Dahj said. “And I’m not leaving you, either. You’re the only person I feel like I can trust, right now.”

He looked at her. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said. “The prospect of it frankly terrifies me.”

“Then you’ll just have to keep both of us safe, when we go,” she said, and smiled at him. “Maybe Laris and Zhaban can help with that.”

Picard looked over her head, presumably at the two Romulans, and his eyes narrowed. “The grapes-” he began. 

“Can wither and die, for all we care,” Zhaban said firmly. “Can you get your hands on a ship with a good kitchen? I just sliced and froze the ciabatta, but there’s some lovely pont l’eveque it would be a shame to waste.” 

“You’re all fecking idiots,” Laris said. “Fine. I suppose I’d better pack, then.”

“Don’t forget the precision laser,” Zhaban said. 

* * *

Seven hit “play” again. 

“I know I’ve been putting a positive spin onto things but I’m worried. That phrasing seems- inadequate. I’m worried all the time, here. But it feels like the balance has shifted, lately. My requests are being ignored, there are new people here who I know must be Tal Shiar and they’re going over my head, even the computer system is less responsive to me. I can’t trust that the Federation will do anything to protect the xBs if the Romulans decide they want to just get rid of us. I don’t know if there’s anything that you or the Rangers can do, and I don’t want you to endanger yourself, but if there’s anyone in the Federation you trust, anyone you could pass this message along to- I’d appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Take care of yourself. Thank you for being my friend and my sister.”

Hugh looked tired. He looked afraid. 

Anyone in the Federation you trust. That was a good joke. 

She didn’t want to go to the Artifact. She could think of very few places in the galaxy she had less desire to return to, in fact. But she’d lost Icheb. She wasn’t going to lose Hugh, too. 

Being shot down over Vashti wasn’t part of her plan. Vashti was Ranger territory, technically, but she avoided the planet; she could sympathize with their distrust of outsiders but it made things inconvenient for her, especially as she refused to hide just how much of an outsider she was, anywhere that she went. So as the planet rushed up to meet her she focused fiercely on how, if she survived the crash, she’d need to lay low, hide, steal what she needed to make repairs if she needed to. 

She woke up in a Romulan nunnery, with a young, bright-eyed face staring down at her.

* * *

“I would have been qalankhai to you,” Elnor said. “If you had arrived before yesterday. If you had been even one day less late!” He was clearly angry. Picard did not know why anger always hit worse, coming from the Qowat Milat. Truly honest anger was difficult to tolerate, he supposed. Usually anger was cloaked in excuses, in layers. “I met Seven of Nine,” Elnor said. “She told me a story, about a friend who is in danger. Her cause is a desperate one, and it is just. I won’t abandon her like you abandoned me.”

Well. Picard supposed he deserved that. 

“Where are the two of you going?” Picard asked.

“Somewhere called the Artifact,” Elnor said. Seven of Nine groaned, from her seat by the window. 

“I’m starting to see the downsides of your religion, kid,” she said. “Look, you can still be honest and just- not answer every question, right?”

“No,” Elnor said, looking genuinely puzzled. 

“No, that’s- this is good,” Picard says. “This is a wonderful coincidence. We- my friends and I, we are trying to rescue someone from there as well.” 

Seven’s eyes narrowed. “What?” she said. 

* * *

“This is what Earth looks like?” the boy asked. Late afternoon light shone in through the villa windows, reflecting golden in his dark brown eyes. He still hadn’t put the _tan qalanq_ down, declining Zhaban’s suggestion to stick it in the umbrella stand. 

“This is what one part of Earth looks like, yes,” Laris replied. She watched the boy from a position by the wall, by one of the holosuite control panels. 

Elnor pushed a curtain aside, peering out at the orderly grape fields and distant mountains. “This is where he went,” the boy said. “After he left Vashti. This is where he was, all that time?” On the last few words, his head turned to meet her gaze. His face was so appallingly open. Naked. 

“It’s a replication of it,” Laris said. “A good replication.” Jean-Luc had already had the program, when they’d settled at the villa. A piece of peace, he’d told her once with a self-deprecating laugh. I carried this place around with me, when I was an admiral. He’d shown it to her on the _Venture_ ’s holodeck, the night she’d burned her final bridges with the Tal Shiar, when he’d told her that she and Zhaban could consider Earth their home, if they wanted. Could consider him their home. Two years into their residence at the villa, he’d spent a few days updating the program. Adding in the painting Zhaban had bought in a jumble sale. The chip in the coffee table where Laris had thrown a knife when Number One startled her late at night. The stain on the rug where Picard had spilled wine during a passionate evening discussion of King Lear. She’d realized, while he was making the updates, that the program was insurance against a future where their life was gone. The circular stains on the coffee table, the smell of old wood, the mice that kept getting into the walls despite all the force fields she set up to keep them out. These things could vanish at the speed of a supernova. 

Elnor said, “I’ve never been in something like this before.”

“It’s a pretty trick,” Laris said.

“Do you know if there are any recordings like this of Romulus?” Elnor asked, and Laris couldn’t stand him, suddenly. Couldn’t look at him standing in their living room, like a ghost from a timeline where Jean-Luc didn’t leave the child on Vashti eleven years in the past, where Jean-Luc recognized early that the child did not belong with the Qowat Milat, where Jean-Luc and Laris and Zhaban were guardians and not ghosts haunting a place that did not really belong to any of them, trapped by the weight of their past choices. 

“There are, I’m sure,” Zhaban said, interjecting. Taking over, saving her. He was always so good at that. “I don’t think we have any in the memory banks of this ship, but I’ll put a request in over the network. Do you want to do the rest of the tour now?” 

“Yes,” Elnor said, still, of course, so perfectly earnest. 

Later, in bed, Laris said, “I can’t stand nuns. Never could. Do you think that’s because I’m not a very spiritual person?”

“Could be,” Zhaban said. “Could be you’re just incurably suspicious, and can’t stand anyone with nothing to hide.” 

“How could anyone bear to be so exposed all the time,” she said, and then rolled over, face pressed into her pillow, and slipped her hand down between the mattress and the headboard, to feel the phaser she’d stashed there. 

* * *

“Cake,” Raffi announced. “You all looked like you could use some. You also looked like you could use some company, so I’m thinking, at the least we can all eat cake together in the same room, hm?”

Three pairs of eyes stared dolefully at her. But the chocolate cake seemed to have captured her audience’s attention. 

“Dig in,” Raffi said, picking up her own fork. 

Elnor was a very rapid but fastidious eater, once he’d stopped making astonished noises about the extreme sweetness of the cake; Dahj ate slowly, her fork carving smooth spiral ribbons out of the chocolate frosting; and Agnes stuffed her face. Raffi watched, concern growing, until Agnes spit out a mouthful of cake and groaned, “I think I’m going to be sick.” 

“You should not have eaten so quickly,” Elnor said rather righteously. Dahj snickered. 

“Okay, honey, okay, let’s get you to the bathroom,” Raffi said quickly, offering a hand to Agnes, who took it gratefully. Holding someone’s hair back was nothing new to Raffi, and it’d get her a chance to hit Agnes with some hard questions while she was vulnerable, with the added bonus of leaving the kids alone together to hopefully get over some of their standoffishness. 

“Is that cake?” someone asked from the doorway. Raffi looked up. Leaning against the wall, looking her over sardonically, was the Fenris Ranger. The ex-borg. Seven of Nine. Annika Hansen. All the information Raffi had scraped together since Jean-Luc returned from Vashti flashed through her mind. There wasn’t nearly enough of it. 

“Please,” Raffi said. “Have some.” She smiled. 

“Thank you,” Seven of Nine said. “I think I will.” She grinned as she walked past. Raffi watched her, the way her hair fell tousled across her shoulders, the confidence with which she held herself. 

Oh, no. No, no, no. _Down_ , girl. 

“Seven of Nine,” the boy said, sounding thrilled and also suddenly serious. It put Raffi in mind of her first days at the Academy, decades and decades ago. How she’d been around her favorite teachers. Like a little puppy. She hoped the boy wised up sooner than she had.

“Hey, kid,” Seven of Nine said, sitting down and reaching for a forkful of cake. “Good,” she said approvingly, around a mouthful of it. 

Raffi felt herself trying to grin back, and thought, Well, this is going to be interesting.

* * *

“Soji,” Dahj said, her mind going blank. 

“Dahj,” her sister said, and then, “Dahj, oh my god, Dahj.” 

She was crying- there were scrapes on her face- she was more upset than Dahj had ever seen her but she was alive she was okay she was real- Dahj ran to her, and Soji hugged her like she never wanted to let go. 

“Through the portal,” the new ex-Borg was saying, “quickly, quickly.” 

Dahj’s sister turned to look back at him, tears bright in her eyes. “What about you?” 

“I’ll cover your escape,” the man said, with determination, though it was hard for Soji to imagine this small, gentle-seeming person fighting anyone. “I won’t leave the other xbs.”

“Neither will I,” said Seven of Nine, putting a hand on his shoulder. Something seemed to pass between them. 

Elnor raised his sword. “Then neither will I,” he said.

“Kid,” Seven said.

“A hopeless cause,” Elnor said. “That is what I signed up for.” 

“I guess you did,” Seven said. 

“Elnor,” Picard said, and then he sighed. 

“Go,” Elnor said, and Dahj didn’t need to be told twice. Soji’s hand in hers was the only important thing in the universe anymore. She squeezed her sister’s hand, and looked into the shimmering portal, and pulled them through. Whatever was to come, at least she wouldn’t be alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> So so sorry I didn't realize at first that the final part of this was missing! If you saw it before I fixed it, apologies, and thank you for your great prompts!


End file.
